Lidl Has Been Ordered to Destroy Its Chocolate Bunnies
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Lidl has been ordered to destroy its chocolate bunnies after it lost a court battle with Lindt.
The Swiss firm had argued its gold-wrapped Easter rabbit deserved copyright protection from a similar product sold by the budget supermarket.
Switzerland's highest court agreed and overturned a ruling last year by the country's commercial court that had sided with Lidl.
It ordered that all the imitation bunnies be destroyed, but suggested the chocolate needn't be wasted and could be melted for use in other products.
Although I did like LIDL's bunnies I think this is a sensible decision as I dont think supermarlets should be allowed to imitate existing. Why cant they have original designs themselves?
Aldi sell a very similar chocolate bunny, I suppose they will be next to be taking to court and told to melt them down.
I agree - they have appear to have been copying others for too long. It cant be that difficult to produce their own designs. they dont need to copy
I have quickly set up a company called "Chocolate Rabbit Waste Disposal Ltd." and hoping Lidl gives them all to me to "destroy" 
Shame on Lindt for being so childish. How many thousands of pounds did it cost them to oppose to Lidl chocolate bunnies? I can tell the difference in taste in Lidl bunny and Lindt bunny.
I would let the consumer decide who was offering the best product, they probably have very different markets so why restrict choice. Making a snow hare with bells on its ears would be my next move.
I must admit I don't agree with Lidl and Aldi copying other products including packaging. Seems unfair to me. They should develop their own unique packaging and ideas. People identify products based on their packaging and making their packaging extremely similar seems wrong. Especially when you see Lidl or Aldi price comparison carts and they compare their products to branded products from other supermarkets rather than the budget generic food the other supermarkets sell which would be the right products to compare, this seems wrong too. I'm sure there are people stupid enough out there not to work out how their baskets/trolleys have been manipulated or their products are copying branded products. I wouldn't pay the big money for branded products myself but I feel they have a right to protect their IP including packaging designs. I personally think Aldi and Lidl should be punished more for this and more of their products should be forced off the shelves.
BonzoBanana I agree with you, but looks like we are in minority. Could you image yourself coming up with a great idea and others copying you that why we need to patent products but I have read this means nothing now.
eyeballkerry Does seem like we are in the minority. There is no actual reason why their labels should copy branded goods except commercial manipulation. You see fake brands everywhere now thanks to Lidl's and Aldi. Tesco is no longer 'Everyday value' but instead 'Stockwell' or other brands and the same in Sainsburys. They don't take it so far as copy other brands designs typically but they are pretending to have very low cost branded goods in the same way as Lidl and Aldi with their own fake brands. I have no problem with fake brands but copying the artwork to look like higher cost branded goods should be illegal.
It reminds me of the Balco action camera sold by Aldi I think (could be lidl), designed to look like a gopro action camera both physically and how the menu's look but inside is a low end very cheap allwinner chipset and a more basic image sensor. The casual consumer it looks like a gopro in many ways but of course offers very basic possibly unsatisfying performance for most people. You can get the same chipset and sensor in cheaper action cameras than the Aldi version but those don't mimic the gopro in the same way, different case design and different menu's, same poor performance though. Also power tools that mimic Bosch designs and other products that try to look like low cost versions of more premium products. It's clear these supermarkets keep pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with because there is often news reports of them facing legal action. There comes a point where you just have to be more aggressive against such retailers with much higher levels of punishment in order to stop this type of behaviour.
I think this is so petty on Lindts part. People who buy this chocolate range from Lidl clearly do so as they enjoy it and its within their budgets. With everything else that's going on in the world right now some chocolate bunny's that look similar to their more expensive counterparts is a drop in the ocean compared to more serious events happening. Lindt you should really be ashamed of yourselves. 
Sammycb I'm sure if you came up with an idea or design perhaps you came up with a T shirt design with a slogan that was popular and you paid a lot of money to have a batch made only to find them impossible to sell because another trader just copied your design and managed to sell it cheaper you would just accept it and reason to yourself that more people can enjoy your design at a lower price even though you don't benefit from it at all in fact you may be forced to sell your product at a loss and go into debt. I'm sure Lindt should be happy to accept maybe a 70% reduction in sales because Lidl have ripped off their product. Their workers are happy to accept shorter hours and maybe factory closures etc to help Lidl and end consumers pay less.
It's a chocolate bunny and surely they can do their own design, even improve on it possibly. I just don't see any reason to accept commercial manipulation like this. Saying that I don't touch Lindt products with a barge pole, I don't like their chocolate very much and its extremely expensive but thats not really the point.
I remember when Poundland did a copy of Toblerone and ended up changing the design of the chocolate and the packaging because of legal action by Toblerone. I felt that was the right thing to happen and to be honest I much prefer the poundland chocolate anyway in taste. The hint of honey in Toblerone is not very appealing to me as I don't really like honey and its much reduced in the poundland bar which I massively prefer.
It's important to be fair I feel and people's ideas and designs should be protected and not just re-used by supermarkets.
If this is the case then they will have to go after all of the supermarkets as each of them sell chocolate bunnies that have a resemblance to the Lindt one. I buy one for my son each year as they are so much cheaper.
I appreciate that copies are made and sold at budget prices. At the end of the day you get what you pay for.
Destroy? Couldn't they give it away for free?
That sounds like a waste of food (wouldn't consider chocolate as food, but still).
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